William P. Fessenden

William Pitt Fessenden (16 October 1806-8 September 1869) was a member of the US House of Representatives (W-ME 2) from 4 March 1841 to 3 March 1843 (succeeding Albert Smith and preceding Robert P. Dunlap), a US Senator (R) from 10 February 1854 to 1 July 1864 (succeeding James W. Bradbury and preceding Nathan A. Farwell) and from 4 March 1865 to 8 September 1869 (succeeding Farwell and preceding Lot M. Morrill), and US Secretary of the Treasury from 5 July 1864 to 3 March 1865 (succeeding Salmon P. Chase and preceding Hugh McCullough).

Biography
William Pitt Fessenden was born in Boscawen, New Hampshire in 1806, and he became a lawyer in 1827, the same year that he founded the Maine Temperance Society. In 1832, he was elected to the Maine House of Representatives, and he served in the US House of Representatives from 1841 to 1843 as a Whig. He returned to the state legislature during the late 1840s and early 1850s, and he was elected to the US Senate in 1854. His strong anti-slavery principles led to his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and his participation in the organization of the Republican Party, and he went on to serve as Secretary of the Treasury from 1864 to 1865 under President Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, he left the cabinet to return to the Senate, and, in an act of political suicide, he supported President Andrew Johnson's acquittal during his 1868 impeachment trial. He died in office in 1869.